Legislation and landfills

Our opinion: There are noteworthy matters, and then there are not worthy matters, before the state Legislature. A cleanup is in order, and on more than one level.

It’s just slow enough at the state Capitol that the big bills pending — a hike in the minimum wage, which Governor Cuomo now endorses; and reform of New York’s campaign finance laws, which ought to happen — have to compete with the attention that inevitably comes to legislation that could be charitably called frivolous.

Bill after bill, some utterly silly, draw legislators’ time and attention. Sorting those with civic virtue from those that would be best discarded in some sort of legislative landfill becomes an important task of its own.

There are not one but two bills to designate a state dog, for example, and another to make black dirt the official state soil. There’s a would-be law to bar tummy tucks, piercings and tattoos for dogs, although — hard to believe we’re saying this — legislation to ban fake dog testicles seem to be off the table after a brief controversy. (If only we were making this up.)

But then comes a constructive bill that’s getting little attention close to home and none at all in the larger political environment.

It’s from state Sen. Roy McDonald, R-Saratoga, who is attempting to compensate municipalities in southern Rensselaer County for the local tax revenue wiped out by years of unfettered industrial pollution.

hat should be desirable property near Nassau Lake and the Valatie Kill instead has been a drag on the tax base since before the last decade’s real estate boom and bust. The potential taxes that never materialized are another unfortunate legacy of the Dewey Loeffel dump and the contamination by PCBs and other toxins that has long festered there, abandoned by General Electric, SI Group (formerly Schenectady International) and Bendix.

Eureka, New York! We’ve found S. 2502 — legislation that confronts damage done by a dump, rather than legislation fit for one.

The $80,000 a year that surrounding municipalities would get as compensation for fallen property values represents the essence of what government is supposed to do.

Mr. McDonald’s bill has made it out of the pile of 1,235 bills that have been introduced in the Senate this session, winning overwhelming passage. It now needs similar action in the Assembly, where its sponsor is Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin, R-Schaghticoke.

It’s a bill that deserves Assembly action, despite the legislative tradition of ignoring minority-sponsored legislation. Consider it a test case in a post-member item era. If the legislature can’t handle this sort of aid for a valid local need, you would have to wonder about the viability of the state’s budget process.

Certainly it’s worth more attention than some of the frivolous majority-backed bills that are out there, like those from Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg, D-Nassau County, and Assemblyman Micah Kellner, D-Manhattan — the rival versions of what breed the state dog should be.

The McDonald-McLaughlin effort is is neither the stuff of the big headlines at the Capitol — like the entirely worthy minimum wage increase — nor the well-deserved ridicule that the Legislature can bring upon itself. It’s simply the people’s work that needs to be done.

A little plot of land in southern Rensselaer County is languishing in the dumps, and legislators ought to deal with that rather than letting state government go to the dogs.

The money proposed is a token amount that recognizes decades of failure in addressing the remediation. Thanks to the communities impacted, the efforts to clean up the dump are going on at the same time we are pushing for legislation to detect additional pollution, reimburse lost revenue and are forcing the polluters to clean up the mess. The state has failed in 30 years of remediation expenditures. Try telling communities that suffer from this that they don’t deserve to be compensated and well as have this toxic mess cleaned up. Do your own search just in this paper or on the internet of the Dewey Loeffel Landfill and see what you think.